"[4] The Parson's Wedding did not appear in print until the collected edition of Killigrew's dramas, Comedies and Tragedies, was published by Henry Herringman in 1664.
In that volume, each of the plays is identified with the European city in which Killigrew wrote the given work, mainly during his periods of foreign travel; and the collected edition assigns The Parson's Wedding to Basel.
The bawdy tone of the play, notably different from Killigrew's earlier tragicomedies The Prisoners and Claricilla and The Princess, may have been a reaction to the highly artificial cult of Platonic love favoured at the Caroline era court of Queen Henrietta Maria.
Biographers have also speculated that the play's dark outlook on sexuality and marriage may have been part of Killigrew's reaction to the 1638 death of his first wife, Celia Crofts.
Many plays in English Renaissance drama exploit bawdy humour and risqué subject matter; but they normally maintain at least a formal commitment to the established morality of the social order.
The two characters in the play who come closest to representing the established order, Lady Loveall and the Parson, are the biggest hypocrites, and fare the worst.
The minor character Crop is a Brownist who is given rough treatment; and the thoroughly-humiliated Parson is compared to leading Presbyterian divines like Stephen Marshall.
While the play contains some physical humour (in a scene in mid-play, Crop the Brownist is abused and ejected from London's Devil Tavern), it is dominated by verbal wit.
The Parson confronts social and professional ruin for his apparent sexual misconduct; even when the trick is revealed, he risks profound embarrassment over its possible exposure.
The frightened Parson is cowed into the status of a wittol, a complaisant cuckold, as Wanton pursues her erotic adventures; he even joins in some of the further schemes of his tricksters.
Masters Careless and Wild work their own trick on the women, spreading the rumour that their marriages have already taken place and arranging appearances to that effect.
[5] In the 1660s and '70s, Killigrew was the head of the King's Company; and he gave his Parson's Wedding two of the more remarkable productions of the era.
Given the fact that women performers had been appearing regularly on the English stage only since 1661, the all-female productions were sensational and revolutionary in their day.
[6] Objections have been raised to The Parson's Wedding from its own time onward (Samuel Pepys called it "an obscene, loose play").